This invention relates generally to selecting content for presentation to users, and more specifically to determining a subset audience of a topic to assign to a posted content item.
Various online systems provide content to client devices for presentation to online system users via one or more networks. An online system may select content for presentation to a user based on information about the user maintained by the online system. For example, an online system allows a user to establish connections between other users and to provide content to the online system, which provides the content to the other users connected to the user. The increasing popularity of online systems, and the significant amount of user-specific information maintained by online systems, allow users of an online system allows to easily communicate information about themselves to other users and share content with other users.
In particular, to present content items to a user, the online system may determine for the user content items and other connections that the user has interacted with in the online system. Based on these interactions, the online system may determine a candidate set of content items to present to the user. However, although the online system is able to determine a topic that the user may be interested in, and thus content items related to the topic, the online system may not have properly determined the particular treatment that a user has for that topic. For example, the online system may have determined that a user is interested in the topic of climate change, due to the user interacting with a threshold number of other content items that have the keyword “climate change,” but the online system cannot determine whether the user is for or against climate change. If the online system presents a content item to a user which is related to the topic that the user is interested in, but opposite to the treatment of the user regarding the topic, the user may find the content item undesirable and not rely on the online system to discover content of interest.